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Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

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Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#61

Post by resolutebat »

rubymancer wrote: post #13

> Approximately 80% of the income of traditional capitalist conglomerates go to salaries and wages, according to Varoufakis, while Big Tech’s workers, in contrast, collect “less than 1% of their firms’ revenues”. This doesn't sound right to me, but if it is Varoufakis has a point. Our contract, such as it is, with traditional capitalists is they employ many, produce some sort of value and keep as much profit as they…

Google's revenue in 2022 was $280 billion. 1% of that would be $2.8 billion, and Google had 190000 employees at the time. I'm pretty sure the average wage of those employees is not $14,736, so Varoufakis would appear to be off by at least a factor of 10x.

On the other hand, if Google did pay out 80% of revenues, the average Google paycheck would be a cool $1,178,947.

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#63

Post by dan-allen »

stuart78 wrote: post #15

The Amazon case in this article seems to fall flat in the same way the Apple as Monopoly argument does. It works only if you ignore the fact of categorical choice (Android in the case of Apple). No seller is forced to sell on Amazon, as demonstrated by the thousands of Shopify and Etsy-hosted sellers out there. Yes, within the world of Amazon, Amazon sets the rules, but if the users leave, so will the sellers. Shopif…

Like how a serf could move their crops to a more generous lord.

It’s a false dichotomy that you either have one monopolistic company or perfect competition. Like almost everything, it’s a spectrum.

Apple and Google aren’t monopolies, they’re oligopolies. That’s better but a far cry from efficient competition. Compare their 30% App Store cut to online stock brokers which charge single-digit percentage fees and also require significant infrastructure and compliance overhead. They’d love to charge more but they’re in a sea of competitors who would eagerly steal away their customers.

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#64

Post by JDEW »

jrm4 wrote: post #49

Here's the thing I've come to realize; there's literally no point at all in mentioning Capitalism because it means SO MANY DIFFERENT THINGS to people. Step 1. Let's define "commerce." You know, people buying and selling things, making favorable trades and such. Let's agree that we recognize that this is a thing that has happened for a long time and is likely to happen for a long time. You might say it's "good," or yo…

Indeed, and it’s one of the most powerful tools in propaganda: slather on additional context so that it become indiscussible (as there is no common language anymore).

Capitalism is a power system where capital and not creation dictates ownership. If you define it like this, people are often more inclined to see it as unethical. Which is exactly what the ruling class (aka the owners of capital) doesn’t want.

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#65

Post by Chiba-City »

jrm4 wrote: post #49

Here's the thing I've come to realize; there's literally no point at all in mentioning Capitalism because it means SO MANY DIFFERENT THINGS to people. Step 1. Let's define "commerce." You know, people buying and selling things, making favorable trades and such. Let's agree that we recognize that this is a thing that has happened for a long time and is likely to happen for a long time. You might say it's "good," or yo…

[dead]

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#67

Post by emporas »

I have listened a lot of Varoufakis's speeches some years back, in Greek as well as in English, when i had no idea of economics. Varoufakis was always very critical of the tendency of capitalism and market forces to create powerful companies and wealthy individuals. Lately he is all about Amazon, Google etc.

In my opinion, it is a mistake to try and understand what's the purpose of money, by focusing on the consumption, rather than the production. Varoufakis falls into this trap. I have written in the past a relevant comment [1].

A recent example to illustrate what's the importance of money, is the production of CPUs, GPUs, TPUs, QubitPUs and so on. What's the more important processing unit, in the year of 2023? GPUs of course! How do we know? The price of Nvidia is going up and up. The consumers send a signal to the company which produces the most important processing unit, to increase production.

So, money is an automation. It automates the answer to the question: "Which one of the processing units do we need to increase the production of?"

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37636591

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#68

Post by _oghd »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #60
_oghd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nor is Yannis Varoufakis even remotely advocating eliminating the notion of private property ownership. uh, yes, he does. > I try to create a vision of a liberal, socialist society that is not based on private property but does use money as a vehicle for exchange and markets as coordinating devices. I preserve money and markets because the alternative would be to fall to some fearsome hierarchical control, which, f…

> uh, yes, he does. I clarify, I meant in the linked article; not an interview from years ago.

in the original article.... I quote:

>Towards the end of Technofeudalism, Varoufakis canvasses some proposals, drawn from his earlier book Another Now (2020), for how to address these issues. These include ending the cloudalists faux “free service” model and replacing it with a universal micro-payment model, instituting a Bill of Digital Rights, and using digital technology to “democratise companies” (with decisions being taken collectively by “employee-shareholders”)

employee owned coops are a major socialist idea, and are a definitive step away from privately owned capital, toward collectively owned production by the employees (proletariat, if you will).

so, yes. he does. in this article.

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#69

Post by djrobstep »

oraphalous wrote: post #20

Conversations about capitalism have become pointless... I'd rather eat mud. When people start arguing one way or the other about the goods or ills of capitalism, both sides inject definitional or theoretical aspects that include an entire mountain of pre-supposition, that I barely understand what anyone is talking about. It would take hours to unpick what the hell they mean by the term... which I thought generally sh…

> the right to own property, and to trade it without coercion

Trade requires coercion. Without coercion to stop you taking a particular object, there would be no need to trade for it, you would simply take it.

Without coercion to stop you living in your house if you stop paying rent or mortgage, why would you keep paying?

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